The Story Museum is delighted to be working with Cheltenham Festivals in delivering the Festivals’ network of teacher book groups in Oxfordshire to bring you Reading Teachers = Reading Pupils.
Alongside our formal learning programme which is available to all schools, we develop projects in partnership with selected schools and groups where we can have an especially significant and positive influence on literacy, creativity and wellbeing.
These tend to be funded projects which means we can offer activity at a heavily subsidised or cost-free rate to participants enabling us to reach those who wouldn’t ordinarily engage in a mainstream cultural offer. Projects can last anywhere from a few weeks to several years and we always aim to create impact that outlasts our own involvement, with both individuals and partner organisations.
We are delighted to be hosting three Artists in Residence, all story experts in a variety of ways: Oral Storyteller Peter Chand, performance poet Karl Nova, and comic artist Neill Cameron. Supported with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the artists are working with schools in and out of the museum to inspire their own creative work.
April 2019-August 2020
A 3-year partnership with 3 schools in Banbury: Wykham Park, Dashwood and Harriers, funded by Children & the Arts and Artswork. Students in Years 6, 7 and 8 visited Oxford for The Story Museum’s programme of storytelling shows and interactive exhibitions, as well as other museums in Oxford. They worked with artists such as Devon Glover (aka ‘The Sonnet Man’) and each year their experiences have enabled them to achieve an Arts Award.
2016-19
A funded project aimed at children who have been identified by their schools as ‘reluctant readers’. Once a week over six weeks, the children are given an ‘adventure’ to link with the book that they have been reading. The programme is designed to help children make emotional connections with reading and to stimulate their desire to read, encouraging them to read for pleasure and thereby improving their literacy. In 2016 the project was fully evaluated.
2015-present
Maggie’s Day is a special literary day for children. It was set up with The Story Museum to celebrate the life of Maggie Evans, a young literary agent with a passion for children’s literature, who died in November 2008. Each year, a writer-in-residence at The Story Museum helps to engage young people in projects designed to inspire a continuing love and appreciation of books and stories.
2011-present
A funded project to enable a member of the museum's Learning Team to spend one day a week in a targeted primary school, working with the children to develop and steer a ‘story space’ and the activity within it. Using our experience of building engaging and magical installations here at The Story Museum, we designed and installed a ‘Story Ship’ within the schools as a setting for the story making.
2016-19
We worked with eight Oxford City primary schools to deliver Story Museum Storydays. The days started with a whole school oral storytelling performance for up to 250 children, followed by an interactive exhibition where exhibits are sequenced to follow the story narrative.
January 2013 to March 2015
This training programme for volunteers enabled a group of local adults to learn about the myths, legends and fantasy literary heritage of Oxford and to develop a range of heritage skills. The project was supported by the National Lottery, through the Heritage Lottery Fund.
2012